The Effects of Semantic Elaboration on L2 Vocabulary Learning

The present study investigates the effects of semantic elaboration on L2 vocabulary learning. Sixty-three Japanese university students were divided into two groups and assigned to perform two different output tasks of sentence writing and translation which were assumed to differ in degree of semantic elaboration. The sentence writing group was required to write English sentences with the target words unknown to the participants. The translation group was required to translate Japanese sentences into English equivalents with the same target words as those in the sentence writing task. The sentence writing group outperformed the translation group on the three posttests conducted immediately after, one week after, and three weeks after, the task performance. An analysis of variance showed significant differences in the posttest scores between the two groups. The results of this study present new evidence to indicate that semantic elaboration has positive effects on L2 vocabulary learning and that it can have a long-term effect on retention of L2 vocabulary